Scotsman letters 1 March 2025
Rubber Stamps
John McLellan hits the nail on the head in his article, “How SNP is overruling local decisions to force wind farm developments on rural communities”.
It would indeed save time and taxpayers’ money if every renewable energy project went straight to SNP minsters for a rubber stamp and that is no doubt what they are aiming for. After all, it is written into the Scottish Government’s own “Guidance on taking part in planning appeals and other cases” that “The number of representations against a proposal is not a determining factor”. Why have pesky members of the public acting as barriers to deployment?
According to a recent Freedom of Information response, “the Planning Minister is the Minister responsible for taking a decision on behalf of Scottish Ministers collectively on planning cases after considering the Reporter’s report and after receiving detailed advice from officials in the Planning, Architecture and Regeneration Division (PARD)”
It must pain Ministers greatly when a Reporter appointed by their own Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA) recommends refusal after a lengthy and expensive public inquiry.
After receiving the Reporters’ recommendation to refuse the Dumfries and Galloway pylons and overhead lines it took Ministers and PARD a year to come up with a good enough reason to disagree with the Reporters’ recommendation and eleven months for them to do the same with Strath Oykel Wind Farm. Their decisions would no doubt have been made a lot faster if approval instead of refusal had been recommended.
If ignoring recommendations by their own Reporters is to become the norm instead of the exception, are we to assume that there will be no requirement for DPEA in the future, that public inquiries will be a thing of the past and democracy will cease to exist in any shape or form?
Aileen Jackson, Scotland Against Spin, East Renfrewshire
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